Bo Vink, Philip Sullivan

Anxiety is a common emotional state that affects all levels of athletes, leading to potential performance decrements (Ford et al., 2017). However, anxiety can also be interpreted as either debilitative or facilitative (Ong & Chua, 2021). As a result, athletes can benefit from psychological interventions, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to alleviate and alter their perceptions of anxiety (Niering et al., 2023). ACT focuses on changing relationships with thoughts, rather than eliminating them, making it well-suited to improving anxiety interpretation (Wood & Turner, 2025). It is an effective intervention for the treatment of general anxiety in Canadian university students (Grégoire et al., 2018). Yet, the research specifically examining ACT and sport performance anxiety interpretation consists of a singular case study, in which the authors suggest that further research on the topic is needed (Wood & Turner, 2024). As such, the proposed study aims to examine whether ACT can alter and improve the interpretations of pre-performance anxiety in university student athletes. To carry out the feasibility study, student athletes with self-declared performance anxiety will be recruited to participate in a 6-week-long ACT intervention. This will consist of 1-hour group sessions covering ACT concepts such as values and acceptance. All participants will complete the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2D (CSAI-2D) questionnaire and the Psychological Flexibility Sport Scale (PFSS) three times – before the intervention, after the last ACT session, and 1 month after the intervention. Feasibility will be assessed by measuring participant retention, adherence to the intervention and feasibility of recruitment.